TY - JOUR
T1 - Scientific Authors in a Changing World of Scholarly Communication
T2 - What Does the Future Hold?
AU - Baffy, Gyorgy
AU - Burns, Michele M.
AU - Hoffmann, Beatrice
AU - Ramani, Subha
AU - Sabharwal, Sunil
AU - Borus, Jonathan F.
AU - Pories, Susan
AU - Quan, Stuart F.
AU - Ingelfinger, Julie R.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors would like to thank all members of the Writing for Scholarship Innovation Group of The Academy at Harvard Medical School for useful discussions during the preparation of this manuscript.
Funding Information:
Because today’s academic success and promotion greatly depend on authors” ability to publish in the most prestigious journals, 21 top-notch scientific journals are extremely competitive and have single-digit article acceptance rates. Without profound changes in the mechanisms of research funding and academic promotion guidelines, authors and academic systems will likely continue to focus on perceived journal prestige hierarchy rather than fully weigh the benefits of OA publishing. Alternatively, academic institutions may ultimately choose to revise their current policies for promotion and tenure. A change from journal-based to paper-based recognition is being promoted by the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment, developed in 2012 by a group of professional societies, publishers, and research agencies, which recommends valuing what (the quality of the content), and not where (the journal), a manuscript has been published, with the number of times an article is cited by others rather than journal impact factors being the more valuable promotion parameter. 22 Scientific authors” publishing preference may shift as prestigious OA journals are increasingly developed either as new ventures or by greater open online access to traditional journals. 23 Governmental and private funding agencies can also profoundly shape academic publishing practices. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Seattle, Wash) and the Wellcome Trust (London, UK) have already mandated that all research findings supported by their funds need to be published in OA journals under CC BY license without embargo, thus blocking publication in several leading journals. 24,25 Plan S, an ambitious but controversial project recently created by a coalition of research funders from 12 European countries with the support of the European Commission (Brussels, Belgium), has set a goal of 2020 by which all state-funded scientific authors should use OA, preferably under CC BY, for their publications. 26,27 Because the pharmaceutical industry prefers rapid publication and broad visibility, the balance may be further shifted toward OA publishing. In another development, authors funded by the Biohub of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (Redwood City, Calif), an emerging supporter of basic science, are required to post preprint manuscripts online prior to peer review. 24 The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative strongly supports bioRxiv, an OA preprint repository for biological research founded in 2013. 28 Apparently, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and other preprint services eliminate any delay in publishing and provide free share, but do not benefit from peer review, and greatly depend on authors” self-discipline.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019
PY - 2020/1
Y1 - 2020/1
N2 - Scholarly communication in science, technology, and medicine has been organized around journal-based scientific publishing for the past 350 years. Scientific publishing has unique business models and includes stakeholders with conflicting interests—publishers, funders, libraries, and scholars who create, curate, and consume the literature. Massive growth and change in scholarly communication, coinciding with digitalization, have amplified stresses inherent in traditional scientific publishing, as evidenced by overwhelmed editors and reviewers, increased retraction rates, emergence of pseudo-journals, strained library budgets, and debates about the metrics of academic recognition for scholarly achievements. Simultaneously, several open access models are gaining traction and online technologies offer opportunities to augment traditional tasks of scientific publishing, develop integrated discovery services, and establish global and equitable scholarly communication through crowdsourcing, software development, big data management, and machine learning. These rapidly evolving developments raise financial, legal, and ethical dilemmas that require solutions, while successful strategies are difficult to predict. Key challenges and trends are reviewed from the authors’ perspective about how to engage the scholarly community in this multifaceted process.
AB - Scholarly communication in science, technology, and medicine has been organized around journal-based scientific publishing for the past 350 years. Scientific publishing has unique business models and includes stakeholders with conflicting interests—publishers, funders, libraries, and scholars who create, curate, and consume the literature. Massive growth and change in scholarly communication, coinciding with digitalization, have amplified stresses inherent in traditional scientific publishing, as evidenced by overwhelmed editors and reviewers, increased retraction rates, emergence of pseudo-journals, strained library budgets, and debates about the metrics of academic recognition for scholarly achievements. Simultaneously, several open access models are gaining traction and online technologies offer opportunities to augment traditional tasks of scientific publishing, develop integrated discovery services, and establish global and equitable scholarly communication through crowdsourcing, software development, big data management, and machine learning. These rapidly evolving developments raise financial, legal, and ethical dilemmas that require solutions, while successful strategies are difficult to predict. Key challenges and trends are reviewed from the authors’ perspective about how to engage the scholarly community in this multifaceted process.
KW - Open access
KW - Peer review
KW - Predatory publishing
KW - Preprint repository
KW - Self-archiving
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075856694&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85075856694&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.amjmed.2019.07.028
DO - 10.1016/j.amjmed.2019.07.028
M3 - Review article
C2 - 31419421
AN - SCOPUS:85075856694
VL - 133
SP - 26
EP - 31
JO - American Journal of Medicine
JF - American Journal of Medicine
SN - 0002-9343
IS - 1
ER -